Child Development, May/June 2000, Volume 71, Number 3, Pages 678–683
The Stability of Attachment Security from Infancy to Adolescence
and Early Adulthood: General Introduction
Everett Waters, Claire E. Hamilton, and Nancy S. Weinfield
Current attachment theory hypothesizes that attachment security during infancy influences individual differences
in adult representations of attachment. We present three long-term longitudinal studies using three different
samples relevant to this hypothesis. Each study assesses infant attachment by using the Ainsworth
Strange Situation and adult attachment by using the Berkeley Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Attachment
security was significantly stable in the first two studies. Discontinuity in all three studies was related to negative
life events and circumstances. Comparison of the results across these complementary studies affords a degree
of replication and sheds light on alternative interpretations. Various mechanisms underlying the stability
and instability of attachment security are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
The role of early experience in later development is an
enduring issue in developmental psychology. This issue
is of theoretical and clinical interest and, in important
respects, defines the relation of developmental
psychology to the social, personality, and clinical psychology
of adulthood. Developmentalists today generally
agree that infants can meaningfully engage, experience,
influence, and represent their environments (e.g.,
Mehler & Dupoux, 1993; Sroufe, 1997). They also agree
that characteristics of both individuals and environments
can be coherent over time. Thus theory and research
agree that developmental change is both coherent
across time and open to environmental influences
(e.g., Ainsworth & Marvin, 1995; Lewis, 1997; Sroufe,
1979; Sroufe & Rutter, 1984; Waters & Sroufe, 1983). Just
as few developmentalists would say that early experience
is never important, few would say that it ever
guarantees long-term developmental outcomes or inoculates
against subsequent trauma or deprivation
(Sameroff & Chandler, 1975; Sroufe & Jacobvitz, 1989).
Despite this hard-won consensus, much about the
importance of early experience, the stability of individual
differences, and the role of individual and environmental
variables in specific areas of cognition,
behavior, or emotion is domain specific. The general
principles are clear. But for any area of cognition, behavior,
or emotion, the specifics depend on formulating
and testing causal hypotheses and integrating
domain-specific hypotheses with general ideas about
early experience.
Attachment theorists have made important contributions
to current views of early experience and individual
differences. The secure base relationship in infancy
depends on experience. It is exquisitely attuned
to context and, although available across a wide range
of situations and across age, its operating characteristics
remain open to revision in light of significant new
experiences (Bowlby, 1969; Waters, Kondo-Ikemura,
Posada, & Richters, 1991). Bowlby (1969, 1973) hypothesized
that early relationship experience with the
primary caregiver leads eventually to generalized
expectations about the self, others, and the world.
Cognitive representations of these expectations are referred
to as “working models.” Although such representations
emerge early in development, they continue
to evolve in light of attachment-related experiences
during childhood and adolescence (Bowlby, 1973;
Bretherton, 1990; Oppenheim & Waters, 1995).
Bowlby’s (1969) hypotheses about infant and adult
attachment have generated a great deal of research on
secure base behavior in infancy and attachment representations
in adulthood; it is only now becoming
possible to conduct long-term follow-up studies to
examine his ideas about consistency and change from
childhood to early adulthood. The accompanying
studies examine relations between infant attachment
classifications and attachment representations in
early adulthood. These studies share several goals.
The first is to provide descriptive information about
the stability and change in attachment organization
from infancy to late adolescence/early adulthood in a
variety of developmental contexts. As Fox (1995) has
noted, such data are important points of reference for
ongoing controversies in attachment research. The second
goal is to determine whether stressful attachmentrelated
life events are related to changes in attach©
2000 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.
All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2000/7103-0012
Waters, Hamilton, and Weinfield 679
ment organization over this interval. As Vaughn, Egeland,
Sroufe, and Waters (1979) emphasized, change
per se does not contradict Bowlby’s theory. One of
Bowlby’s most important departures from classical
psychoanalytic theory was his emphasis on actual (as
opposed to fantasized) experience. For attachment organization
to persist despite significant attachmentrelated
experiences would present a major challenge
to this formulation. The third goal of the accompanying
studies is to stimulate discussion and research on
the mechanisms underlying stability and change in attachment
representations. A number of developmentalists
(e.g., Belsky, Campbell, Cohn, & Moore, 1996;
Carlson & Sroufe, 1995; Sroufe & Jacobvitz, 1989; van
IJzendoorn, Juffer, & Duyvesteyn, 1995) have emphasized
the importance of developing models to guide
longitudinal research on these issues and the difficulty
of doing so without initial empirical benchmarks.
SAMPLES, DESIGNS, AND
SHARED MEASURES
Each of the following studies employs a similar design:
they assess attachment in infancy and attachment
representation in young adulthood. The first
study (Waters, Merrick, Treboux, Crowell, & Albersheim,
2000) presents findings on a sample of young
adults reared in middle-class families. The second
study (Hamilton, 2000) includes families participating
in a longitudinal study of alternative family lifestyles.
This unique sample provides important information
about the extent to which the results of the
first study might be specific to middle-class samples.
The third study (Weinfield, Sroufe, & Egeland, 2000)
reports on a sample of extremely disadvantaged families
who experienced rates and types of stressful life
events far beyond anything encountered in the other
two samples. This study is important for at least two
reasons. First, the sample itself places research on predominantly
middle-class samples in a useful context.
Second, it provides useful information about the vicissitudes
of stressful life events and their impact on
attachment.
In addition to sharing similar designs, each of the
following studies used the Ainsworth Strange Situation
to assess attachment security in infancy and the
Berkeley Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) to assess
attachment security in early adulthood. For economy,
we outline the procedures and scoring systems for
these familiar measures here rather than repeating
them in each study.
Ainsworth Strange Situation. “Security” is a key construct
in attachment theory (Waters and Cummings,
2000). A secure infant is able to use one or a few attachment
figures as a secure base from which to explore
and as a haven of safety in retreat and is confident
in this person’s availability, responsiveness, and
competence to serve as a secure base. This secure base
phenomenon is best assessed by direct observation
across time and context in naturalistic settings. Unfortunately,
such observation is time-consuming and difficult
to do well. Ainsworth, Bell, and Stayton (1971,
p. 37), Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall (1978, p.
242), and Vaughn and Waters (1990) have demonstrated
that we can make strong inferences about the
everyday secure base behavior of home-reared middleclass
U.S. infants from their behavior in a brief series
of separations and reunions in the laboratory. The
Strange Situation consists of eight episodes: mother–
child free-play (Episodes 1, 2, 3), experimenter–child
free play (Episodes 3, 6), separation from mother (Episodes
4, 7), and reunion with mother (Episodes 5, 8).
On the basis primarily of response to the mother
during two reunion episodes, infants are classified
as secure (i.e., confident in mother’s availability and
responsiveness), insecure-avoidant, or insecureresistant.
In middle-class U.S. samples, approximately
65% to 75% of home-reared 1-year-olds are
classified secure. Both the proportion of infants who
cry and the proportion of infants classified secure
versus insecure have been shown to differ within
and across cultures.
All secure infants greet or approach the mother on
reunion; if upset or crying they are comforted by
physical contact, holding and interaction with the
mother; they do not avert gaze, show signs of anger,
or seek to be put down before they are ready to return
to play. Their play returns to preseparation levels
by the end of the episode. Insecure-avoidant infants
are less likely to cry in response to separation; they
are identified primarily by failure to greet the
mother, aborted approaches, or ignoring the mother
early in the reunion episode. Such avoidance tends to
increase rather than decrease from the first to the second
reunion. Insecure-resistant infants (sometimes referred
to as ambivalent) are very likely to cry during
the separation episodes. When the mother returns
they often continue to cry; they often look at and
reach for the mother with little or no active approach.
When picked up, they do not actively cling and are
not easily comforted. If the mother offers a toy they
often show continued distress by slapping at it or at
her but this is not accompanied by active turning in
or by clinging. They frequently stop crying only to
start again if the mother puts them down to play. An
additional classification of insecure disorganizeddisoriented
(Main & Solomon, 1986) is not included
in the present studies because the infant assessments
680 Child Development
were conducted before this pattern was described
and validated.
As predicted by Bowlby-Ainsworth attachment
theory, sensitive maternal care and related behaviors
throughout infancy are consistent correlates of the
“secure” Strange Situation classification (Ainsworth
et al., 1978; DeWolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997; Posada
et al., 1999). Lamb, Thompson, Gardner, and Charnov
(1985) summarize a wide range of attachment- and competence-related
correlates that lend support to the validity
of the Strange Situation classifications as a measure
of attachment security. Finally, the secure versus insecure
classification has good discriminant validity vis-àvis
both cognitive developmental level (Ainsworth et
al., 1978) and temperament (Sroufe, 1985).1
The validity of the Strange Situation in any population
or culture rests on its relations to patterns of secure
base behavior over time and contexts in naturalistic
settings (Ainsworth et al., 1971, p. 37; Ainsworth et
al., 1978, p. 242; Vaughn & Waters, 1990). There may
well be populations in which the Strange Situation
does not map closely onto secure base patterns in
daily life. In such circumstances valid assessment is
always possible by means of direct observation of secure
base behavior as in Ainsworth’s Baltimore longitudinal
study (Ainsworth et al., 1978) or recent studies
using the Attachment Q-set (e.g., Waters & Deane,
1985; Waters, Vaughn, Posada, & Teti, 1999). BowlbyAinsworth
attachment theory does not depend on the
Strange Situation working equally well in every population.
It does, however, depend on our evaluating
its validity before using it in new contexts. When this
is done, studies of attachment stability and cultural
differences in rates of secure versus insecure attachment
across cultures can only enrich attachment theory.
When we can rule out measurement failures,
population differences can be important clues that direct
attention to (1) cultural or ecological differences
in caregiver behavior, (2) ecological adaptations in the
way secure infants use caregivers, or (3) cultural or
ecological specificity in the relation between caregiver
1 Although the weight of available evidence supports the secure
base interpretation of secure versus insecure Strange Situation classifications,
relations between attachment and temperament deserve
further study. Unresolved issues include (1) the effect of infant temperament
on maternal sensitivity; (2) the effect of “fit” between infant
and maternal temperament on maternal sensitivity; (3) the role
of maternal care on the consolidation of temperament-like characteristics;
(4) the relation of positive affect, temperament, and attachment
behavior in the Strange Situation and at home; (5) the nature of
individual differences within secure and insecure groups; and (6) the
possibility that temperament influences an infant or child’s perception
of and response to intrusive care (Seifer & Schiller, 1995). Resolving
these issues could help clarify mechanisms that underlie both
stability and change in attachment security.
behavior and infant secure base behavior. With close
attention to the reliability and validity of caregiving
and secure base assessments, cross-cultural research
can make a significant contribution to our understanding
of the development and function of secure
base behavior (Waters and Cummings 2000).
Berkeley Adult Attachment Interview. Bowlby proposed
that with age and cognitive development, sensorimotor
representations of secure base experience
give rise to internalized mental representations
through a process in which the child constructs increasingly
complex internalized representations of
the world and of significant persons in it. The relative
safety or danger of a situation and the availability and
responsiveness of significant attachment persons are
not appraised afresh every time; rather, an organized
pattern of internalized representations (including affective
as well as cognitive components) both within
and outside of conscious awareness organizes information
relevant to attachment experiences and feelings
and guides behavior in new situations (Bretherton,
1985; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985).
In an effort to capture a generalized representation
of attachment, Mary Main and her colleagues developed
a semistructured interview about childhood attachment
relationships and the meaning that the individual
currently gives to past experiences in these
relationships (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985, 1996). The
narrative is examined for material purposely expressed
by the individual and for material the individual seems
unaware of, for example, apparent incoherence and
inconsistencies of discourse, thus aiming to assess elements
of attachment representations which are not
conscious. The scoring system (Main & Goldwyn,
1985–1995) is based upon (1) descriptions of childhood
experiences, (2) language used in the interview, and (3)
ability to give an integrated, believable account of experiences
and their meaning. The language and discourse
style used is considered to reflect the individual’s state
of mind with respect to attachment.
Individuals classified as secure coherently and believably
describe diverse childhood experiences, value
attachment relationships, and view attachmentrelated
experiences as influential in development.
Adults are classified as insecure on the basis of incoherence
in the interview. Adults classified as dismissing
deny or devalue the impact of attachment relationships,
have difficulty with recall of events, often
idealize experiences, and often describe an early history
of rejection. Adults classified as preoccupied display
confusion about past experiences, and their
discussions of parental relationships are marked by
active anger or by passivity and continued attempts
to please parents.
Waters, Hamilton, and Weinfield 681
An additional classification, unresolved with respect
to loss of a family member or significant relationship
or abuse at the hands of a parent or primary
caregiver (U), is assigned if a subject’s
discussion of these specific events is judged incoherent.
Subjects are assigned both a secure/preoccupied/dismissing
classification and, if applicable,
the unresolved classification. In the present studies,
comparisons with the three Strange Situation
groups were based on the subjects’ secure/preoccupied/dismissing
AAI classification. When AAI
classifications are dichotomized (secure versus insecure),
any secure adults who received a U classification
are designated insecure.
AAI classifications have been shown to be highly
stable in a number of short-term test–retest studies
(see Crowell & Treboux, 1995; Sagi, van IJzendoorn,
Scharf, Koren-Karie, Joels, & Mayseless, 1994). Several
types of data support the attachment working
model interpretation of the AAI. For example, Gao,
Waters, Crowell, and Treboux (1997) have shown that
AAI classifications are significantly related to engaged
adults’ ability to both use and serve as a secure
base for their partner during discussions of relationship
problems. The strong concordance between maternal
AAI and infant attachment security (Main et al.,
1985; Posada, Waters, Crowell, & Lay, 1995; van IJzendoorn,
1992) is also relevant to the measure’s validity.
Studies have also demonstrated substantial predictive,
concurrent, and retrospective correspondence
between parents’ mental representation of attachment
as assessed by the AAI and their infants’ attachment security
as assessed in the Strange Situation (e.g., Fonagy,
Steele, & Steele, 1991; Main et al., 1985; van IJzendoorn,
1992; see Crowell & Treboux, 1995, for a
review). The discriminant validity of secure versus
insecure AAI classifications has been established visà-vis
IQ, cognitive style, narrative style, general adjustment,
and a variety of personality trait variables
(Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 1993;
Crowell et al., 1996).2
Negative life-events. In the studies presented here
we identified a core set of life events derived from the
theoretical and empirical literature that would be expected
to influence the stability of attachment directly
2 As with the Strange Situation, there appear to be cultural and
subcultural differences in the proportion of subjects classified secure
versus insecure. Such differences are difficult to interpret. The
English syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic cues used to score the
AAI cannot be translated directly to another language. Nor is there
an accepted criterion comparable to infant secure base behavior
that can validate, and if necessary stand in for, the AAI in crosscultural
research. This is a significant obstacle to research on the
generalizability of research with the AAI.
by altering the child–parent relationship and indirectly
by increasing life stress for the parents. These
events, identified by Bowlby (1953), included the death
of a parent, foster care, parental divorce, chronic and
severe illness of parent or child, single parent, parental
psychiatric disorder, drug and alcohol abuse, and
child experience of physical or sexual abuse. In the
Waters et al. (2000) study negative life events were
scored from the AAI and by checklist in early adulthood;
Hamilton (2000) and Weinfield et al. (2000) assessed
negative life events prospectively from measures
administered during their longitudinal studies.
The purpose of these life event assessments was to
test the hypothesis that changes in attachment organization
are not random but rather are related to events
that bear on the caregiver’s availability and responsiveness.
These are complex issues. They cannot be
addressed in a single study or a single research design.
The present studies establish some of the key parameters
of attachment stability and change from infancy
to early adulthood. They are a necessary first
step toward understanding the mechanisms that explain
stability and change across such intervals.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported in part by grants to Everett
Waters from The Foundation for Child Development
and to Everett Waters and Judith Crowell from the
National Institutes of Mental Health (MH44935); by
grants to the late Bernice T. Eiduson from Carnegie
Corporation (B3870) and USPHS (MH24947) and to
Thomas S. Weisner from Carnegie Corporation (B4189)
and W. T. Grant Foundation (#92-1488); by dissertation
grants to Claire E. Hamilton from the Psychocultural
Study Group, Department of Psychiatry and
Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California, Los
Angeles; by grants to Byron Egeland, L. Alan Sroufe,
and W. Andrew Collins from the National Institutes
of Mental Health (MH40864-08); and by a Dissertation
Fellowship Award granted by the University of
Minnesota to Nancy S. Weinfield. The authors would
also like to thank Leila Beckwith and three anonymous
reviewers for their helpful comments on previous
drafts of this set of publications.
ADDRESSES AND AFFILIATIONS
Corresponding author: Nancy S. Weinfield, Department
of Psychology, Gilmer Hall, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA 22903; e-mail: nweinfield@
virginia.edu. Everett Waters is at the State University
of New York at Stony Brook, and Claire E. Hamilton is
at the University of Georgia, Athens.
682 Child Development
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